Online Fashion Startups to Watch

Since the widespread success of online fashion companies like Gilt Groupe, fashion has started to embrace technology, thus the recent influx of fashion/tech startups – from concept-driven e-commerce sites to social networking platforms. There also seem to be plenty of investors, incubators and venture funds ready and willing to back them. Now, there are getting to be so many that it's difficult to navigate the ones that are actually full of potential, original and worth checking out from the ones that we don't really see taking off. Here are a few that we feel occupy the former category.

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Fashism

Fashism has been around for a while, but recently acquired additional funding and has become a pretty major fashion/tech success story already. The site allows anyone to upload pictures of themselves and get feedback on their outfit instantaneously, an idea that was apparently very appealing to a lot of people. Now, Fashism has an iPhone app and its founders Brooke Moreland and Ashley Granata are working on a partnership with Foursquare that has to do with store locations. They also just partnered with up-and-coming designer Timo Weiland on their fashion week after party, where guests got to try on AW11 clothes shown only hours earlier, have their picture taken (by a professional) and uploaded onto Fashism instantaneously.

Fashionstake

Founded by two Harvard Business school grads, Fashionstake seeks to democratize fashion by showing a few up and coming designer collections and allowing users to pre-order and/or invest money in that line, in hopes that it will be produced, exclusively for Fashionstake. Users will see a return in their investment in the form of clothes and store credit.

Fabricly

This very cool e-commerce site allows designers to design limited-edition, exclusive collections and Fabricly takes care of everything from production to publicity, so that the designer takes on no financial risk. The latest is Mono Lake, a women's collection by Molly Girard Coonan, who used to design Barlow with Alice Barlow, who happens to be one of Fabricly's co-founders. Both learned first hand the struggles of being an up-and-coming designer, and thus Fabricly was born.

Of a Kind

Also known as the first shopping site built on Tumblr, Of a Kind was started independently by two girls, Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur, who showcase emerging fashion designers by commissioning them to create limited edition (very limited, like 30 units), exclusive products and releasing them alongside a series of editorial posts about the designer's life and design process. Highlights have included an adorable bunny bag by Mandy Coon and a very lust-worthy belt/bracelet by JF & Son that's available now.

Moda Operandi

Moda Operandi, started by Lauren Santo Domingo and Aslaug Magnusdottir, isn't as democratic as other sites on this list, but it's definitely the first of its kind. The exclusive site allows invited members to pre-order pieces immediately after their runway debut, and you only have to pay half the cost up front and the other half when it ships, two months before it hits stores. The premise seems risky, but we've witnessed enough runway lust to make it viable.